How To Succeed as SQA with Your Team (Part 1)

Hi, my dear reader!

Let's dive in.

First, I would like to introduce you to the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, which suggests that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In simpler terms, a small portion of your inputs (effort, resources, etc.) will produce a large portion of your results.

Now you know how this works, and you can effectively balance your effort between tasks and manage priority in a more sophisticated way.

I apply this principle everywhere, even out of my professional life.

Second, divide your work into small chunks, and then focus on one chunk at a time and finish them one by one. That helps you achieve results faster, and you will not lose focus if there is a small distraction. I know sometimes it's not obvious how to tackle a task and split it into pieces, but over time, if you do it constantly, you will recognize that you start doing it automatically (unconsciously).

Later you can summarize chunks into summaries, and those summaries become a part of year reviews. (In some cases you may notice progress in a few months after those exercises.).

Third, the biggest challenge in the SQA field is transparency and visibility. This can be partially solved by notifying interested parties about your progress or achievements. That can be an informal email with a quick summary about progress, achievements, and blockers. No need to provide many details; try to keep information sharp and minimalistic. You can even include a plan or roadmap for progress to track. Frequency can be weekly or biweekly.

This simple action will solve potential lack of communication, provide transparency and visibility (be ready to answer some questions), keep you in tune, and later, as I mentioned earlier, can be used for year reviews.
You can not imagine how much you can achieve in a short period of time.

Fourth, use 10%-15% of your time to learn something new. It can be a new tool or an article about climate change and how it affects nature on Earth, exploratory testing of an application or system, learning how to code, etc.

Five, remember, software quality is not only your responsibility. It's effort inside a team and across the organization. I know a lot of SQA engineers who carry burdens on their shoulders that lead to burnout and potentially affect the psychological state of a person.

Thanks for reading this article. In the next one, we will start with hands-on samples of how to improve your impact directly on team performance and team delivery.